.USA Domains Don?t Work

March 13, 2002

Court Shuts Down Companies That Used Deceptive Appeal To U.S. Patriotism


Inman News Features

An operation that used deceptive spam messages and appeals to patriotism to sell nonfunctioning Web site addresses?including .USA?has been shut down by a U.S. District Court at the request of the Federal Trade Commission.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago ruled the defendants won?t be able to reemerge by registering the same domain names offshore. The court also ordered an asset freeze to preserve money for consumer redress.

The FTC complaint names TLD Network Ltd., Quantum Management Ltd., TBS Industries Ltd., Thomas Goolnik and Edward Harris Goolnik of Finchley Road, London, England.

According to the FTC, these companies launched an aggressive unsolicited e-mail campaign in the United States after Sept. 11 to advertise domain names ending in .USA.

Subject lines on the messages read: "Be Patriotic! Register .USA Domains."

Officials from the United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading have been assisting the FTC on the issue of domain name sales and are investigating such activities in the U.K.

Copyright: Inman News Service


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